


come and crash into me

by wheo



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Keith is Impulsive, Kisses, M/M, Old Writing, Post S7, his mom is an angel here on earth, lance is Impulsive (for his own good), lance is having some kind of an existential crisis, lance realizes things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 04:57:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15722445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheo/pseuds/wheo
Summary: “I’ve realized things slip away easily, especially if you don’t hold on to them.” Another pause. “What I’m trying to say is… Keith... I like you.”And the world stops.“You what?”





	come and crash into me

**Author's Note:**

> s7 ending except no axca and krolia (how'd they get to earth so fast anway?) plus adam is alive bc im not evil
> 
> there r mentions of death n injuries n vomiting? nothing serious tho (no one dies or vomits. lance is just a mess) also a lot of mentions of heart rate monitors? its just sum weird concept idek
> 
> listen to collide by rachel platten bc its klance & also beautiful
> 
> trigger warning for shitty writing & a clueless author

When Lance opens his eyes he feels like he’s slept for weeks, maybe even years because his eyelids are heavy and he flinches at the sight of light. His vision is blurry around the edges but he can hear the monitor beeping to his right and it’s a repetitive sound that would annoy him if it wasn’t an indicator that he’s alive and not in some weird kind of heaven disguised as a hospital room. Or maybe it _is_ heaven, but very well disguised. He doesn’t know. 

“He’s awake,” a voice says, sounding just a little bit muted in Lance’s ears as if he’s underwater, and he thinks about the ocean and he’s on _Earth?_ It's hard to believe but he  _is_  on Earth, and the voice that is speaking to him is so familiar and comforting that it reminds him of the sound of waves hitting the shore. He’s missed that voice during every second in space, and now hearing it makes his heart skip a few beats and his breath get stuck in his throat and it all goes unrecognized by the heart rate monitor which continues its regular beeping.

“Mom?” he says, and it’s a question. Because he can’t believe his eyes or ears or his memory but that _has_ to be his mom and he _has_ to be on Earth. His voice is raspy and quiet and if he wasn’t himself he wouldn’t be able to hear it but he _is_ himself and he’s _alive_ and there’s tears running down his cheeks before he knows it. His vision blurs even more but he blinks it out and gives into the smile tugging at the corners of his lips and he feels like his face might split in half.

He hears his name and it’s even more voices which makes it harder to distinguish the owners but before he even gets to think about who it could be, there’s a warm hand on his shoulder and his vision is clear. His whole family is by his side, little ones holding onto the bed’s side rails, his mom’s hand on his shoulder, Veronica at the foot of his bed. His mother is looking at him with tired but happy eyes and Lance can feel his heart drop to his stomach at the sight. First he disappears into thin air without a goodbye and now he subjects himself to almost deathly situations with her right there to see it and he feels like he subjects her to all of those things as well.

The usually cold hospital room is engulfed by the warmth of love and Lance has never been happier to be alive. He finds out he’s been out cold for 2 days, which isn’t much in retrospect of the time he’s spent in space, but he figures waiting 2 more days to finally talk to someone after they vanished without a trace seems like an eternity.

After a healthy amount of family bonding and chatter, Lance can feel his body healing from the inside. Maybe his legs are still a little banged up and maybe there’s still a constant headache throbbing at the back of his head but his heart feels like it’s on fire because of the warmth surrounding it. This condition goes unnoticed by the heart rate monitor once again.

“I need to see my friends,” he says in a tone that’s a little too worried, a little too urgent. “How is Hunk? Is Pidge okay? Allura?” _Keith?_ goes unsaid and he wonders why he can’t utter Keith’s name when Keith has been the one calling out for Lance in every critical situation. He remembers the vague _“Lance, come in”_ after he and Veronica crashed and feels just a little bit sick to his stomach. His headache somehow throbs even more.

“Everyone’s awake and with their families,” his mother smiles, but then stops, and her smile falters and it’s like watching a bright light flicker out. “Except… Keith, was it?”

Lance’s blood runs cold, and despite not being able to say Keith’s name two seconds ago, he now hears it like a repetitive chant in his head. His throat dries up and he feels the need to cough but he doesn’t, instead he tries to grasp at words to say and it comes out as a whisper. “Yeah, Keith. Is he okay?” he asks and it sounds a little too worried, a little too anxious, a little too shaky, and he feels like his heart could jump right out of his chest any second now.

His mom is silent for a moment and the world seems to stop. Lance prepares himself for the worst because there are ten million things that could have happened but his brain decides to jump to conclusions and attach itself to the worst one. Keith is _dead_ and Lance didn’t even _ask_ about him, didn’t even _mutter_ his name. As if he doesn’t care.

But he does. More than he’d like to admit.

Lance cares about Keith, plain and simple. If he didn’t he wouldn’t have chosen him to be saved during that weird alien version of family feud, wouldn’t have followed Keith every step of the way while he was leading Voltron, wouldn’t have comforted him while Shiro was away. But he did. Because he cares.

Another moment passes and Lance feels like he’s going to vomit.

Lance’s mother - being the wonderful mother that she is - seems to immediately catch on to his distress. She rubs her thumb into his shoulder in a comforting manner, that kind of motherly comfort Lance always loved. “He’s okay, just…. Still asleep. And… he’s alone. Or that’s what I’ve heard. Takashi Shirogane visits every day but he spends most of his time by his fiancé’s bedside.”

Lance blinks. _Shiro has a fiancé?_

The room suddenly feels silent even though the kids are chattering in the background and Veronica is attempting to hush them, but Lance seems to drown it out. His face must have gained a pained expression - that, or he grew a second head because his mother is suddenly looking at him with an unreadable expression and he’s waiting for anyone to say anything to break the silence because the nauseating feeling in his stomach is getting worse by the second and if someone doesn’t say anything soon his head might _explode-_

“You want to see him,” his mother says and it isn’t a question.

* * *

So. Lance is in Keith’s hospital room. That is fine. 

What isn’t fine is that Keith is asleep. And Lance is examining him like a science project, but under the hospital gown and the blanket, there isn’t much to see. There’s a purple bruise on every single of his knuckles, each a different shade and shape. One reminds Lance of Keith’s violet eyes, now covered by heavy eyelids and thick lashes and deep sleep. Lance frowns at himself and sighs.

The heart rate monitor is beeping evenly, just like the one in Lance’s room, but Keith’s eyes are still closed and the calmness of the whole situation feels eerie and weird because it’s _Keith_ and Keith is never calm. Keith is all about impulsivity and _shoot first, ask questions later_ and there’s a _reason_ Lance calls him a hothead. Seeing Keith like this feels like watching a forest fire turn into nothing but a flickering flame of a candle.

Here’s what Lance came up with while examining his ex or not-ex teammate (he wasn’t sure if they were returning to Voltron. Hunk had talked about passing Voltron onto the next generation but at the time they were going space crazy so he doesn’t know if Hunk had meant it or not.):

Keith’s dark hair is in contrast against the perfectly white pillow of the hospital bed. His stupid mullet is sticking to the back of his neck and his forehead and it’s resting on his _closed_ eyes and Lance _still_ feels an idiotic need to brush it out of his face and tuck loose strands behind his ear.

Lance counts the number of times Keith’s chest has risen and fallen. He counts thirteen or maybe fourteen or maybe fifteen, he isn’t sure because the heart rate monitor was distracting him and he can’t even get a hold of his own breathing. He’s pretty sure at some point he just stopped because after a minute passed he let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

Lance also pays attention to Keith’s chapped lips, the slope of his nose, his a-little-bit-sunken cheeks and dark eyelashes. And none of those things were of much importance to Lance before. but right now. in this heaven (or not heaven) disguised as a hospital room, they have suddenly become the center of his attention.

Lance wonders how this whole situation would look like to someone if they walked in without knowing what’s going on - Lance hunched over in his chair, elbows on his knees, watching over his unconcious “rival” like a hawk with a little too much fondness in his eyes. If he was ever this focused while behind his sniper it would have been a record-setting shot.

Lance thinks about how things could have been if he wasn’t so deeply hurt by Keith being a better pilot than him back while they were both still at the Garrison and if he had dropped their nonexistent rivalry and started over. Maybe their “friendship” would have gone someplace different, in another reality. If Slav was present he would tell him all about it.

Still, he liked bickering with Keith, throwing silly remarks about his hair and then watching him get all up in arms about it. There was something fun about it, about how Lance’s endless teasing could leave Keith red-faced, and it wasn’t because Keith looked cute while he was annoyed.

Despite all of that, he also liked being _close_ to Keith - being his right hand man, being the one to ground him in stressful situations and all that jazz. There was something rewarding about it, about making the most closed-in member of the team open up to you. Lance assured himself it wasn’t because of the way Keith’s eyes light up or the way the softest, smallest smile spreads across his lips or the way Keith sometimes looks at Lance like he’s the most important thing in the world or the way it makes Lance’s heart flutter. It surely wasn’t because of that.

Lance is really good at lying.

Lance’s attempt to synchronize the tapping of his foot with the beeping of Keith’s heart rate monitor was interrupted by a groan which he was a breadth away from complaining about before noticing it came from the only other person in the room aside from himself.

Keith’s eyes fluttered open and Lance jumped up from his seat - from anticipation or relief, he couldn’t tell. The jump made him a little dizzy and he was suddenly hit with a wave of nervousness and he stopped in his tracks, floundering awkwardly between the bed and the seat while trying to determine whether to come closer or not.

“Lance?”

His fidgeting came to an abrupt stop and he sucked in a breath. His back was turned away from Keith and yet, without seeing him, Lance could hear the confusion in his voice. He could swear there was probably a “what are you doing here?” stuck somewhere in Keith’s throat.

“Oh, hey man! Didn’t…. see you there…”, he says, not giving his brain the time to catch up with his mouth and he flinches at his own words and squints, and he hopes if he isn’t in heaven already, god will take him now. But god doesn’t, and Lance tries to scramble up anything to say with fruitless effort because Keith had already caught up with his mistake and Keith’s mouth is just a little bit open and even though he didn’t say anything yet, Lance wishes Keith would just _shut up._

“You didn’t see me in my own hospital room?” Keith says, despite Lance’s wishing. Lance opens his eyes and sees Keith’s frown and his furrowed eyebrows and the lines in his forehead and Lance mentally smacks himself, twice. Once for the nonsense he said three seconds ago and once for thinking Keith frowning is anywhere near cute.

“No, nononono, I saw you and I came here with my own will - no one forced me - and I’m just here because I wanted to talk to you and now I’m going to sit down and stop rambling.” Lance gets a hold of the chair behind him and awkwardly plops down into it before he could embarrass himself even further. “How…. how are you doing?”

“I just woke up, Lance.” Keith says and he shifts to sit up but then flinches in pain and Lance is immediately by his side to help him. He’s adjusting Keith’s pillows and letting Keith hold on to him like a crutch and it makes his skin burn and Lance is so, _so fucked._

He walks to return to his usual seat but Keith interrupts him with “you don’t have to sit all the way there” and Lance doesn’t miss the slight embarrassment in his voice as he says it and he _definitely_ doesn’t miss the blush spreading across Keith’s cheeks. So Lance obliges and he sits next to Keith and the hospital bed creaks a little bit and it’s a weird kind of closeness that reminds Lance of the bonding moment he had sworn he didn’t remember.

“You wanted to talk to me about something?” Keith asks after some moments of silence and it reminds Lance he’s far less ready for what’s about to come than he thought he was. So he sucks in a breath and puts his thinking to the side, letting his somehow still beating heart speak whatever it wants.

“Keith, I know we started off on a wrong foot and we’ve been kind of… not the closest, but everything that’s happened in space and here on Earth has made me realize how temporary everything is. One second you’re reuniting with your family and the other you’re fighting evil purple aliens - no offense.” _Pause._ “I’ve realized things slip away easily, especially if you don’t hold on to them.” _Another pause._ “What I’m trying to say is… Keith... I like you.”

And the world stops.

“You _what?”_

Lance flushes impossibly harder, “I like you! And it’s been a rollercoaster realizing that, and I’ve been holding it in or whatever but it isn't fair! If I like you, I like you, and if I don’t get it out you will never know and you _need_ to know because anything can happen at any given moment and I could die or you could die and things are temporary and they slip away and I like you! I like you, Keith.” He breathes out and there’s a weird feeling running through his veins. He feels hot and twitchy all over and his hands are shaking from the impulse and  _this is what Keith feels like all the time?_

“Lance…” Keith almost whispers and it’s a little too solemn for Lance’s liking and he’s expecting a rejection, some kind of half-assed apology about unrequited feelings that can’t be helped.

“Don’t say anything.”

And before Lance could mutter any kind of retort or question despite that being the thing he was said _not_ to do, there are hands on his face and a pair of lips on his. The back of his throat unwillingly produces a startled noise and it startles Keith as well but he doesn’t pull away because before he gets the chance to, Lance is already kissing back. And it’s a little bit awkward, like two kids sharing a first kiss under a slide on a sunny afternoon, a little bit clueless and unexpected, but good all the same.

Another thing Lance finds out about Keith is that he kisses with the same kind of impulsivity he has while he flies and fights but Lance likes it. It leaves his lips a little bit swollen and his heart painfully thumping against his ribcage, and when Keith pulls away, it leaves him wanting more.

“I guess this means you like me too?” Lance says a little bit choked up and with a breathy laugh, and he wishes he had the heart rate monitor to tell him if this kind of heartbeat is normal.

Keith kisses him again, and it’s an answer.

**Author's Note:**

> this is. uh. kind of a mess? a little bit. but after being in a slump for almost a year & finally writing something i was like hey. why not? so here it is. alexa play fixer upper from frozen
> 
> check out my [tumblr](http://eightiesbf.tumblr.com) if you want! that's a bit of a mess too but i'm rewatching vld from scratch so. more stuff to come maybe? i already have sth im working on so. yeah. & let me know if you liked this! i'd appreciate it a lot


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